Intersection of beveled curve object
This may still involve too much hand-editing for you..

Create your profiled curve to produce a deliberate overlap with its reflection - (you're looking for a good  clean cut down the Y axis) .. here the mirror modifier is only there to vizualise the result

 

Having converted to mesh, in an orthographic view, Use the knife tool, constrained, to cut through the mesh (K),(C),(Z) Rip the selected edges(V, select the excess faces, (mouse over, L), and delete them.



Add a mirror modifier with merge and clip, and in edit mode, bring the halves together until they just snap, and draw them apart again slightly.



There may still be a few editing decisions on the seam, after applying the mirror modifier, removing tris, bringing some vertices together, but not many, if your mesh is not too dense...



and the result is quite clean.